Hadley & Grace(86)
The silos seem to take forever to get closer; then suddenly, like a time warp, they are upon them. Hadley’s heart lodges in her throat as the car bumps from the road onto the gravel of the site. The tires kick up dirt, creating a dust cloud behind them, and when Hadley looks back, she can no longer see the sedan.
Grace cranks the wheel right, sending them skidding around the office building; then she yanks it left, and they slide the other way so the car is now aimed for the narrow space between the silos. At full speed, she barrels toward it, and a second later, the shadows of the drums swallow them, and a second after that, the car slams to a stop.
Hadley throws open the door and yanks Skipper with her as she dives toward the loading dock to her left. Pain shoots through her ankle as she lands, but she manages to scrabble into the corner and wedge herself in tight as she hugs the boys against her.
She lifts her head barely in time to see Jimmy leap into the driver’s seat, taking Grace’s place.
He peels away, and three seconds later the sedan races past. She stares after it in disbelief, unable to believe it drove right by.
She doesn’t move. Neither does Mattie, who squats in the shadows across from her, or Grace, who lies flat on the ground beneath the ramp beside them.
Only when the dust has settled and the taillights have disappeared does she run across the dirt to pull Mattie into her arms, tears streaming down her face even though she’s smiling, her emotions too big to hold inside, her whole body trembling with relief.
63
GRACE
Grace stares at the diminishing dust cloud until there is nothing left to see. Tears brim in her eyes, and her hand goes to her belly, the skin taut like she has eaten a big meal, though she hasn’t put anything in her stomach since the pasta she ate the day before. Your dad is really something, she says silently to their child. And he loves you. Someday, I’ll tell you just how much he loves you.
“We need to go,” Hadley says, sounding like Grace usually sounds.
Grace takes one last look into the distance, then turns away, unable to believe it worked, relieved and heartsick at once. She knew their only advantage was the element of surprise, to do something so daring and unexpected the feds would be caught completely off guard.
Grace spent a long time thinking things through. The moment Frank shot Mark, an APB would have been issued on Tony’s car. The local police would have spotted the car at the silos and called the FBI.
The reason they didn’t apprehend Mattie was because she’s a minor. Had she been an adult, they could have taken her in and coerced her into cooperating. But because she’s only a kid, the moment they engaged her, they would have needed to call social services. And, as Grace knows from experience, social services is real particular about how kids are treated, and there’s no way they would have let the feds use a fourteen-year-old as bait. So instead, they let her be, using her as a carrot without having to involve the mother-bear agency.
“Wow,” Mattie says, stepping up beside her. “They really were watching me. What if I was like in serious trouble?”
Grace wraps her arm around Mattie’s shoulders and nuzzles her head with her chin, the relief of her being safe and beside her overwhelming.
“If you were choking on your tongue, they might have stepped in.” She nuzzles her again. “You did good.”
“I did good too,” Skipper says. “Out like a bullet. Duck and cover.” He puts his hands over his head to demonstrate.
“You did, Champ,” Mattie says. “You did real good.” She holds out her hand for him to high-five, which he does as he says, “I go by Private now.”
Mattie nods her approval as her gaze runs up and down him, taking in his new duds. “I like it. Very heroic. And I go by Tillie now, but you can still call me First Base.”
Hadley steps up beside them. “Where’d you learn to drive?”
Grace winks at Mattie, and Mattie winks back, and Hadley frowns, pretending to be upset but not pulling it off even a little, her relief at having Mattie back completely destroying the act.
As a group, they walk toward the edge of the lot to the Nissan, which is parked where Jimmy left it, beside the maintenance shed and out of sight from the road.
Originally, it was supposed to be Hadley who drove away in Tony’s car, leaving Grace and the kids behind to go to Omaha, and then on to London. Then, last night, Jimmy changed the plan, coming up with the idea of him doing it instead. He was adamant and unwilling to take no for an answer.
“My way to make things right,” he said. “Please, Grace, let me do this.”
And so she did. And now, here she is with Hadley and the kids while he is driving Tony’s car on a two-lane highway that stretches through Nebraska, then South Dakota, then North Dakota, then all the way to Canada.
He won’t make it that far. The car will run out of gas somewhere in South Dakota, but hopefully it will buy enough time for Grace and the kids to get on the plane to London and for Hadley to put some distance between her and McCook.
The illegal tint on Tony’s windows, which is so dark it is impossible to see through, along with the rain forecast for later this morning, should make it difficult for anyone to realize a man is behind the wheel instead of her and that he is alone. She is counting on that as well as all the media attention to keep the FBI on their best behavior. If they think there is even the slightest chance that children are in the car, they will be cautious, and Jimmy is going to drive very safely. His goal is to draw this out as long as possible. “A nice long drive in the country,” is how he put it.